The Water House
by Ellice Rose
Summary: A short, very well-written piece about a girl named Lily and the morning she became a tribute.


**The Water House**

by Ellice Rose

It is long before dawn when there is a sharp crack in my ear and a horse screech in my face. Water. It is time for me to go retrieve the water. I slip out of the itchy cot I've curled up in every night for the past two weeks. Somehow, this is already routine for me. As I slip my coat over my nightgown, I wonder idly how the other children sleep while every morning, the witch screams at me to get up and head into town. I slip on my mother's old boots and lace them up, not in any hurry. There is a strong chance I will get reprimanded for being slow later, but I cannot will myself to move any faster, especially today. The day of the Reaping.

While I walk out the front door, I sling both the rusty pales onto my elbows and slam the door behind me. I can hear yelling from beyond it, and I knew I should not have done it. It is not the witch's choice to keep me in her dusty, grey prison. Then again, it is not mine either.

The weather is a bit too cold for my liking as I trudge down the back alleys and across the square to the water house. The ground is bone dry and the sky is beginning to turn purple. The sky matches the banners that are already hung on the buildings in the square. Each one with a Capitol emblem marked in clear print. I turn away in disgust. If there is one thing I can't stand, it's the Capitol.

The water house is a grey building at sits on the street adjacent to the square. It's tall and is always humming with the flow of water. If you want water, you have to pay for it, but at least it's clean and kind of cold. Most houses and shops in District 10 don't have running water and this is one of the only places to get it. Otherwise, you have to drink out of the lake, which is so polluted that it is an unnatural greenish-black and only the most desperate drink from there.

When I walk into the humid front room of the water house, I am greeted by a silent line of at least a dozen people. Great. This could take up to an hour depending on how well the water is flowing today. Some days, back when my mother would get the water, she would be gone for hours at a time, and always return in a sour mood. And then my dad would kiss her softly on the cheek and return to his sewing. My dad could turn a ten foot length of cloth into the most beautiful dress in the world, given the right amount to time.

I shift into line behind two girls, each holding a jar to carry their water in. One is slightly older and is gently stroking the tangled hair of the younger one. The water house is eerily silent. Most days, it is so loud I can't stand it. With all the people chatting and arguing and so desperate for water, it becomes a shouting match to talk to the person inches from your face. But not today. Each person fills their container accordingly, has it weighed, and pays for the amount of water they took without speaking. Finally, a pump opens and I step forward and thrust the water on. It takes a considerable amount of time to fill up the pales with water, but I eventually finish and pay with the money the witch gives me each morning.

The witch's real name is Mrs. Marta. She runs the community home where I have been staying for the last couple of weeks. She yells. A lot. I am one of the oldest children that live there, being sixteen. The day you turn eighteen, you are thrown out onto the streets, but most kids don't make it that long. Years of living in the community home with little to eat and poor sanitation subject most children to an early death. One swift case of the flu and they are gone. I always pitied the community kids at school. With their thin faces and slumped shoulders, one day they were there, and one day you never see them again.

I never thought I would become one.

The pales are heavy with water and in the spur of the moment, I decide to take the most direct route to the house, thinking I could handle it. The lights in houses are beginning to flicker on as I pass through the part of town I am most familiar with. The place I used to live. There, on the corner, I can already see the shop. My old home.

This was a bad idea. My knees are beginning to shake and my eyes sting with tears. The lights are off, but the blinds are not drawn and I can see everything inside. It all looks exactly the same. I can almost see my dad behind the counter, humming and running his fingers through his tousled chestnut hair. He looks up at me and smiles, beckons me to see what he has drawn for his latest sketch.

Before I know it, I'm on my knees wishing desperately that it was real. That my dad was actually there. But I blink again and he is gone. Replaced by darkness and dust. He hasn't been behind that counter in months.

One day, I returned from school and found the shop empty, which was odd because my dad never closed the shop. I really didn't think anything of it, although in hindsight, I was so unlike him, I should have seen it coming. I walked up the stairs and into the flat where me, my mom, my dad, and my older sister, Daisy, lived. But it was silent. Had they gone somewhere without me? My sister had the early shift at the laundry house and was usually home by the time I was. And my mom and dad were usually down in the shop, attending to customers.

Then I heard it. The utterly recognizable sound of someone trying to subdue their sobs. I crept down the hall, my heart hammering, and slowing opened the door to my parent's room. And there she was, my mom, lying on the bed and clutching a picture in one hand and a length of silk in the other, screaming into the pillow.

I rushed over to her side, shaking her and asking what happened. All she said was, "They left. Lily, they left."

I never actually found out what happened on that day about three months ago. My dad and sister—they just left. And you don't just _leave_ in Panem. I asked around for them for the next few days, but nobody had any idea where they were. They just disappeared into thin air. Sometimes, I think they were taken away by the Peacekeepers for no apparent reason. Or they snuck under the fence of our district and made off across the plains, heading nowhere in particular. More than likely, they were mugged and killed, their bodies stashed where they would never be found. My family wasn't poor. We were targets of the desperate people who needed money. But then again, I still hear my mother say, "They left," over and over in my head and I secretly think she know where they left to, but won't admit it.

After my dad and Daisy left, me and my mom tried to stay afloat, but neither of us really knew how to make clothes. We had no steady income and suddenly one day, we had no money for dinner. I tried to keep the money coming in, but everything I made was cheap and sloppy. My mom began to waste away. She would spend all day in her bed, paralyzed with something I couldn't place until after she died. And on the morning I came to get her up and found her cold and clutching a picture of my dad, I knew she died of heartbreak.

I tried to hide her death out of self-preservation. I knew they would take me to the community house if they realized I was suddenly an orphan. Mostly, though, I was hoping she would wake up, hold me close to her, and tell me it would be okay. I figured I had about two weeks before people noticed. Enough time to prepare myself for what was to come. But I couldn't open the shop and go to school at the same time. It took the Peacekeepers three days to come knocking on my door. To transfer what little I was allowed to keep to the community home. To sell the shop.

It took me three months to lose everything I had.

I close my eyes and turn away from the shop. I force my legs to move. Force them to walk the opposite way. To take me away. I manage to hold in most of my tears and I make it back to the home in one piece. I take the pales into the kitchen, hand over the extra money to the witch, and head straight up to the dorm.

We call it the dorm, but really it's nothing more than a big, cold room with a few dozen cots in it, all tightly compacted. The other children are awake now, stretching their arms and rubbing their eyes. A few look frightened and must have awoken from nightmares. Of course they did. Today is the Reaping.

I help some of the younger girls into their shoes and send them downstairs for breakfast—a little bit of egg and crackers if we are lucky. One person stays behind to help me clean up. Callum.

Callum is a tall, dark haired boy my age with thick eyebrows and a handsome face who always seems to find a reason to smile. At first, I couldn't stand him. He was always saying things like, "isn't it nice out today?" or "this mush actually tastes pretty good today". But I began to realize that when you have nothing, you look for happiness in everything.

As we are fixing the beds he says, "How's the water house today?"

I shrug my shoulders. "Wet," I say.

He seems to know something us up—which isn't that hard because Callum can read me like a book—because he says, "Is everything alright?"

"I walked past it today," I confide. "The shop."

He gives me a sad smile. "What happened, Lily?"

I open my mouth to tell him it was nothing, to tell him that it just brought up some memories, but I'm okay now. I want to seem strong, especially in front of Callum, who is always strong and cheerful even though he has been an orphan for more than five years. But when I try to speak, I burst into sobs. He immediately rushes to my side and awkwardly puts an arm around my shoulder. I try to wave him off, but he just whispers more nice things until I calm down.

We finish making the beds in silence and we head downstairs, my face red and puffy. The sun is just breaking fully into view, which is pretty offsetting, considering how much emotional trauma I've been though just this morning. And we still have the Reaping to do today. In fact, as soon as breakfast it over, we have only a few minutes to dress before we are round up like cattle and led to the square.

I am wearing one of my old dresses, one my father make for me. It is pink with hints of white and green, designed after the flower for which I was named. The stargazer lily. It takes just a few minutes to get to the square, but I can already see it's been transformed even from this morning. The banners are still there, but camera men are perched up on building tops and a temporary stage is set up at the front, near the Justice Building. The sun is starting to shine full force as we wait for the Reaping to begin. I stand in a roped off area. Usually the oldest girls position themselves at the front, but today I am at the very threshold, my waist touching the velvet rope. I think a small part of me wants to be chosen.

Quickly I banish the thought. _Want_ to be Reaped? Unheard of. Maybe not in some of the other districts, but in 10 being Reaped is a death sentence. How empty I must be to wish to be Reaped.

I have sudden, disconnected thoughts about how the Games would take me away from this district where there is nothing left for me. I would be taken away on a fast train and treated like a celebrity. Of course after a few days, I'm thrown into the Hunger Games and forced to kill other children brutally or face being bludgeoned to death or something worse. And after that thought strikes me, I'm quick to tuck the whole idea away. Fold it up and place it neatly in the back of my mind.

No. I do not want to be Reaped.

My eyes fall to the makeshift stage, which sways in the wind. I wonder if the people who set it up make it wobbly on purpose. Hoping that it was all collapse and the huge fishbowl-like bowls will shatter, sending tiny slips of paper fluttering away. I glance momentarily at the bowl which is tinted pink and I know my name is in there four times. My heart jumps a little.

There is a small row of chairs on the stage opposite of the bowl that seat an orange hair man. He is oddly shaped and has a pseudo-smile on his face that doesn't convince anyone. He has been the manager of the District 10 tributes for the last three years, but I honestly don't remember his name. It's Jinx. Or Magik or something stupid like that.

The other two chairs hold the only living Victors of our district. One is an old woman named Nana Opel who everyone loves. She is tiny with beautiful, bright white hair in a braid and always wears a sweater. She is sweet and kind and hands out food to everyone she meets. She used to come into the shop all the time and talk to my mom. They would talk about everything under the sky. But when it came to the Reaping, Nana was quite solemn, never smiling or enjoying any of it.

The other Victor is a young man named Phineas Hale, who won about ten years ago. He is kind enough, but I think the Games really made him hate the world. He is tall and brooding, but for the Reaping has manicured his dark hair and put on a suit, which make him appear above us all. He and Nana make quite the pair.

The Mayor stands up just as the clock-tower hits eleven and begins his uniform speech. I've heard it every year of my life. He goes on and on about how great Panem is and how, against all odds, it survived in a place once known as North America. After years of disaster and war, the old civilization collapsed and out of its ashes is us. Panem. A wondrous Capitol, surrounded by its thirteen districts—each with their own chief industry to create one large, functioning machine of a nation.

Then he dives into the Dark Days. How there was a rebellion against the Capitol came about and how the Capitol, in all its greatness, squished the rebellion and blew District 13 sky high. But, to be certain there would never be another rebellion, the Capitol invented the Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games have pretty simple rules. Twenty-four tributes (one boy and one girl from each district) fight to the death in an arena that changes every year. I remember a few years ago, it was a hot, barren desert with little water and even less food. Then, two years later, it was on the side of a freezing mountain. You just never know. Over a few weeks, everybody is dead except one Victor.

He reads off Nana and Phineas' names and they stand and bow quietly. We all clap unenthusiastically and they sit down immediately. Then he introduces our manager, "Let's give a warm welcome to Karma Brookins!"

The orange haired man stands and hurries over to podium, "Happy Hunger Games!" he says in a particularly girlish way. The Capitol accent does nothing to help him. "I have a feeling this will be a great year!"

Suddenly my sister pops into my mind. Daisy could do the best Capitol impressions that would always leave me clutching my side in laughter. The thought of her almost brings me to my knees. Her flowing chestnut hair, her big, inquisitive eyes. And I suddenly remember how everything was taken from me and it's another punch in the chest to me. My fingers dig into the velvet rope in front of me, straining for stability.

I look up and see Karma digging around in the bowl and I don't even have time to hope it's not me when he pulls the name out and reads it.

It's not me.

I can't even place the name, but I know her face when I see her walking stiffly up to the stage. She lives across the street from me—or did back before my whole family died. I never thought she was more than ten years old, considering how small she is. She has beautiful blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Her parents run the bakery across the street from our fabric shop and I used to watch her playing from our window.

But what I remember the most is what an artist she is. She would make surreal pictures of birds or flowers sometimes people on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk or a rock. She would spend an hour or two on her corner, her little brow scrunched with concentration and her arms working to pour the image out onto the pavement.

There is a murmur among the people—nobody really likes it when a twelve year old gets Reaped because it really isn't fair. The girl, Emmy, continues her way up the stage and Karma welcomes her as if she just won a prize.

I get a feeling of unrest in my stomach because I don't want to watch this tiny artist die on screen.

Next, the males are Reaped. The boy is a name I recognize, but only in passing. I know him from school, Nile Lumberage. He is from the poorer part of town, and he takes a long time to make it up to the stage. He seems to be taking deliberately slow steps at first, but then I see Nile's face. Karma tries to act like he's not annoyed, but Rafe is shaking so hard, he ignores it.

Now my heart is hammering, because this is the moment where I need to make a decision I didn't even think about having.

"Here we have our District 10 Tributes from the preliminary Reapings! Any volunteers?" Karma shouts.

The wind whistles through the crowd and I need to makes a decision immediately. And I suddenly think of my dad and sister and mom and how they probably knew Emmy's family and how they would hate to see her go and so I thrust the velvet rope over my head and shout, "I volunteer!"

There is a stunned silence. Nobody every volunteers.

Emmy's face twists with pain and relief and sadness. Does she know me? Does she remember who I am?

Most people know who I am. Know how tragedy has struck my family. Know how completely alone I am.

There is more silence. And in that moment of deafening silence, I wonder if I have made a terrible mistake.

"Well come on up!" Karma continues enthusiastically, though I can see this has taken him aback. When I reach the stage, he asks, "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Lily Masontee," I choke out. "My name is Lily Masontee."

_Thanks for reading! Please, please review! Tell me what you liked and what you didn't!_

_**Also, did you catch how Emmy was a (blatantly obvious) reference to my favorite HG character? Oops.** _

_Thank you so much again, lovely readers. Read on!_


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